User: springheel_jack Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:29 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It's the Well effect - i.e. the internet dick I built up over here and used as part of the process of becoming a middle-aged Culturally Important Person in my Own Right matters in all other places and to all other people.

User: cofax7 Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:33 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Additionally, it's worth noting--as I mentioned over on Aqueduct--that social capital attaches to the pseudonym. If I post somewhere under my real name, (a) nobody knows it is my real name; and (b) it has significantly less credibility than my pseud does.

I have a decade of online discussion attached to this pseud. Which is why, when the Save Farscape Campaign strategy team was attacked for using pseuds, we didn't give in. Whatever history I have is attached to this name, not my legal name.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:36 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Exactly. I have an investment in this name; I am known by this name to people I've never met. (And I hadn't thought about my real name's being less valuable in the online world, but of course it would be.)

And sometimes the online name simply makes more sense. Who thinks of shrift as [her real name]?

User: juliansinger Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:39 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I basically agree in general.

However, I should note that TNH may have been making grand sweeping statements, but she was making them herself, not for PNH.

PNH, though he doesn't go in the same LJ circles as you or I, does (or did) /use/ it. (And got irritated every time someone said he didn't know what was going on on LJ. Often he didn't, since he was in different areas of it, but hey.)

Also, I do think that a /very small/ portion of the confusion /was/ because of differing LJ customs among LJ subcommunities. It was still /overall/ about race & appropriation, but there was some communication-fail due to the differing customs.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:41 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Yeah, that's why I framed it as a redirect. It is so much safer to talk about People Behaving Badly than to talk about race.

Should I cross out pnh from the above? I think the bit about assuming status transferred is still relevant.

User: kerrikins Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:41 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I hadn't seen that there were objections to using pseudonyms - that's really surprising to me, actually. I'd rather thought that it was assumed that people online use pseudonyms, it's just safer, particularly in public forums. You never know who will be reading. It's not about hiding behind anonymity so that you can say whatever things you want in a negative fashion, it's about being sure that you're secure. And it has so little to do with the disagreement that's been going on in.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:52 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

tnh has deleted or friendslocked her complaint. See here for another complaint.

User: james_nicoll Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:55 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Damon Knight once ventured into rec.arts.sf.written having acquired habits elsewhere on the 'net. The culture clash was pretty ugly, as I recall.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:56 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Yeah. He demanded that it be GEnie, as I recall.

User: fashionista_35 Date: 07 Feb 2009 19:58 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: What the Deuce?

In particular, [info]tnh takes great offense at LJ members using pseudonyms, and has mentioned these pseudonyms in the context of making up a grudge list. (Is there anybody outside their circle that didn't take the comment about logging IP addresses as a threat?) [info]pnh and [info]tnh also assume that their prestige within the SF community automatically transfers to the LJ community, that in particular their opinion of LJ-ers matters more than LJ-ers' opinions of them, and that people who disagree with them are holding a grudge because they're wannabe writers.

Buzzah?

Words do fail me here, so the best I can come up with is buzzah?

I know I shouldn't be surprised that people think this way, yet... I'm always somewhat shocked.

I mean, really?

User: badgerbag Date: 08 Feb 2009 19:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Yes really! They are taking that position based on a belief that if griefers and trolls had to use their real names, it would be possible to hold them to account for their actions, and it might decrease the amount of people behaving badly for the lulz. In effect, they are taking a position against privacy and anonymity, and think that if transparency were forced then the playing field would be level. This assumes that there would be no legitimate personal or political reason for privacy and anonymity, and also does not take into account people's differing levels of privilege to risk or weather the consequences of speaking from their real life identity. I think they are quite wrong.

User:	dsgood
Date:	07 Feb 2009 20:04 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

Seems to me the _nh couple have been acting much the same way they do in sf fandom. And the same way -pnh- did in Usenet.

Which is nowhere near the way all people in fandom and on Usenet act.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:15 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Nope. I have dear friends who are active in SF fandom, and for that matter who publish at/are associated with Tor. I'm not tarring everybody with the same brush.

User: rinue Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:04 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Man, that's weird. I'm young enough to have still been in K-12 when the Internet came roaring up, and have therefore received at least a hundred lectures (and seen many more PSAs to the effect) that I should never ever use my real name online ever. I also shouldn't give out personal information such as which city I live in or what bands I listen to, because people could find out who I am, and those people could be sexual predators.

Obviously, I don't abide by this model; I drop my real name into discussions all the time, and wouldn't go by Rinue if Romie hadn't been taken when I first created my account. But I've always seen this as kind of a risk by me, and it's something people still tell me is dangerous. (I think those people are reactionary, but that doesn't mean they don't pick at me for it.) I'm happy when somebody googles me before we meet and therefore has something to talk about with me - but a pretty large proportion of them also add something to the effect "and isn't it scary that I could know so much?" The taboo is still there.

The other thing that weirds me out about this is that while I happen to like my name, I've published under three different last names. Lots of writers use pseudonyms, whether to sound more marketable, to avoid the irritating parts of fame, or to write in different genres for different audiences. It's most common in romance, but it's all over SF. I'd say a third of the people Reflection's Edge has published have used noms des plumes. So I don't even feel like this is an "internet is weird!" thing. I mean, what about Pythagoras?

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Various of my friends have namechecked the Federalist Letters, as well. At least one of those authors has never been identified, as I recall; there are several candidates, but no consensus.

I think using your real name is a matter of choice. For authors, having a clever and interesting blog is often a sales tool. (I have sought out a couple of LJ members' books because I liked their personalities.) For other people, a blog is a safe place to vent, and it's important to keep it safe. And if you've ever had a stalker, you probably won't want to be out online ever again.

BTW, I've been on LJ lite for the last few weeks; I'm trying not to read during the daytime, and at night I've been focused on RaceFail. How did your current shoot work out?

User: harriet_spy Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:05 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It does seem odd to me that people like tnh lack that adaptive skill. It's hard to imagine not acquiring it in the Long Migration from Usenet to mailing lists and/or the proprietary forums to LJ and the great big blogging world.

Although malice can explain a lot. I've had people tell me, long-time fans, in earnest, that because I used my full name on Usenet back in the day, I can't possibly have any objection to the association of my full name with my LJ pseudonym, even though I established the pseudonym precisely to not have my full name on my fic...

User: cofax7 Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:09 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

because I used my full name on Usenet back in the day, I can't possibly have any objection to the association of my full name with my LJ pseudonym, even though I established the pseudonym precisely to not have my full name on my fic...

Because clearly your circumstances could not have changed in any way!

When I first got online in a serious way I worked in private practice in a very subordinate position. Then I got a job where I had to deal with a lot of government agencies as clients, and now I'm in government. There's no way in hell I'm using my real name to participate in fandom. How is this so hard to understand?

User: spiralsheep Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:14 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: spiralsheep Ram Raider mpfc

Ironically, no-one objected when I posted anti-racist meta-commentary on makinglight as spiralsheep, heh:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008736.html#223938


Edited at 2009-02-07 08:14 pm (UTC)

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:18 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

In my infrequent forays to ML, I've always used my pseudonym and I don't remember anybody complaining.

(BTW, I was terrified, in posting this, that you were actually a "he"; I was pretty sure, but my memory is fried at the moment.)

User: veejane Date: 07 Feb 2009 20:25 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It comes across (inaccurately, I know) as very n00b behavior. Or perhaps better said, the behavior of an ossified orthodoxy too comfortable to learn new things.

Ironically, I too was on Usenet, back in the (rather latter) day, in the alt.* structure rather than rasf*. And I never used my real name on Usenet! I was pseudy from the very first! Why? Because I lurked moar and discovered it might be a wise thing to do, privacy being what it is.

But for all that, when in 2006 I reconnected with people I'd known back in 1998, they were pleased and amazed to find me still the same person! Under pretty much the same username! Some of them had gone pseudy in the meantime, but the dolphin noises were still recognizable, and very satisfying.

User: jesurgislac Date: 08 Feb 2009 01:51 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I did a quick check of my blogroll and figured out half the blogs listed there are by pseudonymous bloggers: all of them have commenters who use pseuds. Whatever Cramer thinks, in her sheltered, n00by way, it's not in the least about being a crook or a con-man...

User: ckd Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:03 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: cpu

I walk a middle line; my name is fairly trivially findable from my LJ, but isn't actually given on my LJ. (Also, initials. Not exactly subtle pseudonymity there.) This ambiguity is vaguely useful, though sometimes it feels a bit fence-sitterish.

My BBS, FidoNET, and USENET days were all pretty much under my own full name and reasonably consistent e-dresses, so the DejaNoogle knows much of me even with relatively common first and last names.

I'm sure there's embarrassing stuff out there in my pile of USENET posts; I wasn't much of an over-sharer even back then, so very little of it has potential for serious embarrassment. (If someone finds something stupid I said in alt.flame 20 years ago, it's unlikely to matter.) Since Google searches on those old email addresses will also find things like code contributions to open-source projects and such, the preponderance of the evidence is likely to be positive.

User: redbird Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:21 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Deja knows a lot about me, in large part because my first Usenet activity was rec.arts.sf.fandom, where the custom was to use the same name you used in other parts of fandom. (So the handles mentioned above would have gone unremarked, but those of us who published fanzines and attended cons using our real names mostly used those on rasf. Then I started posting to alt.poly and didn't think to reconfigure the newsreader at first, and eventually decided that any damage was done. Not using X-no-archive was deliberate.) I don't make it difficult to find my "real" name from the LJ, but it's not going to be the first thing anyone googling on my real name finds. (They'll find enough, I suspect...I posted stuff to mailing lists without thinking about archives, too.)

I've not run into stalkers, but there's no way of knowing whether some people have looked at a resume I sent, googled, and decided to hire someone who appeared more conventional. (I don't talk much about sex qua sex on alt.poly, but I do talk about my partners: plural, and not all of the same gender.) As for parents, one of them reads my LJ--which is fine with me, though I do have a "not mom" filter I use once in a while--and the other died a few years ago.

User: violetisblue Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:14 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Violet Is Ridiculous

*reads, shrugs* Still not seeing how or why I owe a boatload of pantsless wankers my real name or any other particulars of my offline life, and last I checked writers of all sorts have been using pseudonyms since the dawn of fucking time. "Aliases are for wanted posters"? RTFM, melodramatic idiot.

User: oursin Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:40 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I am constantly complaining about the journalistic confusion between 'private' and 'secret' (as in 'X organisation had a secret tunnel' - no, it wasn't secret, the entire organisation and quite a lot of outside people knew it was there: but it was a private tunnel insofar as it was not part of the areas of the organisation accessible to the public): this seems to me to fall into that same category muddling.

User: redbird Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:29 (UTC) Subject: Pseudonym does not necessarily mean anonymous

My feeling--and this isn't based just on LJ--is that as far as reputation and credibility, consistency is more important than "real" names. It's not as though we go around demanding ID to prove that conventional-sounding names are the person's "real" name. (I have no reason to think that any of my friends or acquaintances who are using what look like real names--given name and surname, of conventional forms--aren't using the same names for fannish and LJ interactions as the rest of the time, but neither have I tried to verify it. Someone writing under one name, and using that here on LJ, might have another on their passport or checking account.

Also, speaking of Usenet and old customs: when I was on rec.arts.sf.fandom, some subset of new people would get along badly with the local culture and/or specific people in it. Some of them went elsewhere, and no harm done. A bunch of them did weird things with names. For example, they would accuse certain posters of not using their real names. Those accusations were, remarkably consistently, aimed at the same two people, both of whom were using their legal names, which were not the names their parents had given them. "Aahz" sounds like a pseudonym; he changed it legally. "Avedon Carol" sounds made-up to a bunch of people, and in a sense it is, but it's her legal name. Those posters would also try to be faux-polite in arguments by using the surname of the person they were addressing, and PNH would explain, again, that he has not been "Mr. Hayden" since the 1970s.

Conversely, I met adrian_turtle online, and while I thought "Turtle" might be a handle rather than her legal name, I didn't think much about it. She's still in my address book as that, not under her legal name, though I use the latter when necessary.

User: jonquil Date: 07 Feb 2009 21:35 (UTC) Subject: Re: Pseudonym does not necessarily mean anonymous

"'Aahz' sounds like a pseudonym; he changed it legally." I never knew that!

Speaking of real names, ellen_fremedon faked me out ... it's actually the last words of the first sentence of Beowulf.

Hwæt. We Gardena in gear-dagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

User: ithiliana Date: 07 Feb 2009 22:04 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Excellent post. I checked back to TNH's profile and though she's had a LJ since 2001, there are only 26 entries linked (and while that may not count flocked, I imagine given the lament about the problems she had with pseuds on her friends list that she doesn't post flocked much, although given the lament about the pseuds, I imagine that has changed). The profile doesn't show much activity--if we define lack of activity as one component of sockpuppetishness, well, then based on that evidence, TNH is a sock!

Definitely agree on the culture shock and the related ignorance of certain types of literacies associated with lack of knowledge of the culture.

User: gwendally Date: 07 Feb 2009 23:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

The thing is, I don't remember your real name. I know I knew you on Misc.kids.moderated and I know we interacted for a few years there - I recall info about your children - our children line up in age and gender - but I don't exactly remember which one you were as the names of people I knew online a dozen years ago have blurred into a puddle. If you told me I'd say "ah, yes, that's it!" As you would about me.

But it doesn't matter. I'm vaguely in fandom, too. Our daughters are now at colleges a mere 100 miles apart. We know the same people online and in some cases in real life. Eventually it'll all click into place and I'll realize I've known you (YOU!) for twenty years.

But it hasn't clicked yet, and that's fine with me. I'm okay with living in a world where the people I read and hang out with are virtual instantiations of themselves. It's still them.

By the way, I prefer the introspection that comes with Livejournal posts. I miss the free-ranging conversations that popped up in real time on usenet, but I've been so burned by stalkers and google that I'm okay with it being gone.

I haven't figured out yet how I feel about FaceBook. This is a whole new thing!

User: jonquil Date: 08 Feb 2009 00:59 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

My husband misses that the natural posting form in Usenet was essay-length, and he's never found anything he likes as well.

Facebook CREEPS ME OUT. It's so noisy! I actually resent getting messages there. </oldcodger> (Why do I have one? It's how some old friends find me, although more of them are on LinkedIn.)

> Eventually it'll all click into place and I'll realize I've known you (YOU!) for twenty years.

Hee! Somebody came up to me at work and said "I KNOW I know you from somewhere", and after canvassing various of our previous jobs we realized it was from Usenet, and we'd never known each other in flesh at all.

User: juliansinger Date: 07 Feb 2009 23:25 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Honestly (I say, tangentially), I've been trying to work out if I agree with anything whatsoever TNH said about Patrick's personal capital being munged, in this. (I couldn't think about it reasonably when reading the post itself because it was such a flame.)

And I just can't. It equates to some online people liking him less (which is fine since lots of people didn't anyway), and some small group of people stopping reading Tor books. (Which is, as Nick Mamatas will tell you, a drop in the bucket.) Possibly perhaps some pros and/or fans might in some small part interact differently with him in person, but that can be fixed by... his interactions with them in person.

In short, deflecting flame. Why am I looking for reason in a flame?

Edited at 2009-02-07 11:28 pm (UTC)

User: jonquil Date: 08 Feb 2009 01:23 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I would guess that < 20 people will actually go through with any planned boycott; it takes a fair deal of effort to check the publisher of every book you buy. (Or would for me, anyway, though I used to buy Bluejay books on sight, with their distinctive colophon.)

As to his online reputation... well, a non-Tor author says that the only honor that matters is *your* opinion of what you've done. I doubt Mr. NH's personal honor has been munged, and if others' opinion of him has sunk he has only to wait a couple of months -- when another hundred people will get off of the train.

User: dichroic Date: 08 Feb 2009 01:13 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

"serrana points out that part of her job is Googling applicants to see what they've been up to online."

One hopes that recruiters are smart enough to factor in the issue of common names. Otherwise, maybe I should put my nom on job applications instead - there is one person out there with my first and last name who has a web page featuring "Bondage Barbie". And there's another (might be the same, but there are at least four of us in the US, according to Facebook, so likely many more) who has only a different middle initial, speaking up for Harlan Ellison after the groping incident a few years ago. Anything posted under my nom is probably less incriminating!

I'm in the midst of an argument with a former employer because they were looking for some excuse to fire me, Googled my real name, and found I had administrative decision (public record) with a past employer.

I've now had to explain to two hearings officers the thing with the past employer was due to that employer sharing confidential medical information without my consent.

But in this world the employee is always guilty for speaking up.

User: delux_vivens Date: 08 Feb 2009 01:56 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: eating white peepul

for many of us the threat of not being published in SF is irrelevant; we weren't planning on going there anyway. Similarly, the threat of people's disliking us within the SF community doesn't particularly sting; we have our own communities, and their opinion of us matters more than a community in which we have seldom participated.

pretty much. also at this point, given what I have seen of the people in it, and the level of discourse they are at about the things that are important ot me, what does that other sf community have that i really want?

although, i have to say. talk to you!? you know I am honor bound to PUT YOU IN A SOUP POT, right?

User: jonquil Date: 08 Feb 2009 06:49 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

What, and cut off your supply of perfect crystalline tears?

User: coffeeandink Date: 08 Feb 2009 02:05 (UTC) Subject: ::ignores all srs bznss::

You didn't meet yhlee at Wiscon?

User: jonquil Date: 08 Feb 2009 06:50 (UTC) Subject: Re: ::ignores all srs bznss::

I don't think so -- was she there two years ago?

ARRGH. Now you mention it, I did. There goes my credibility.

or possibly all you LJ people look alike to me

User: dharma_slut Date: 08 Feb 2009 03:58 (UTC) Subject: This pseudonym is staying put Keyword: whatwedo

because I write porn, and once upon a time I had children that were small, and in that time small children were sometimes taken away from their mothers on the suspicion of "satanic Worship." Remember the MacMartin daycare scandal? Well, that's right about when I set down my first hard core sado-masochisitic fantasy.

Now that my kids are young adults and developing their own networks and online reputations, it's much better that their internet presence remain unentangled with my pervy one. They were raised with pseudonyms as the internet norm.

And I relish having this personal identity that does not include that job description.

The funny thing is that my real name is more anonymous than this one; if you google "Stella Omega" there are only two of us on the entire internets-- and that other one id a damn copy-cat. X-D

User: elfwreck Date: 10 Feb 2009 16:01 (UTC) Subject: Re: This pseudonym is staying put

This.

I will consider forgoing internet pseudonymity when my children are both over 18.

User: holli Date: 08 Feb 2009 04:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: secret power fantasy

Wow, that is... mystifying, basically. LJ's use of pseudonymity seems fairly standard, for the Internet-- it's not whether a name can be tied to a real identity, it's whether a name can be tied to a *history*. It's the history that tells you who the person is, not what they put on their tax return.

Of course, I say this as someone who fails at pseudoyms, and has done so for (ye gods) 10 years. I do wish I'd realized, back at Table Talk, that the habit there of using real names was not usual. I *really* wish I'd joined LJ with a proper pseud; as things are, I'm pretty sure a determined potential employer could find out things I don't want found out. Sigh. Hasn't happened yet, at least?

User: jonquil Date: 08 Feb 2009 06:53 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

You can buy a "name change" token for about $20.00. After that, everybody who links to "holli" automatically have their links repointed to "draczilla" or whatever, but searches for "holli" don't find you any more. I joined LJ as "jonquils" because "jonquil" was owned by a deleted journal. When it became available, I bought a rename token, and all old links to my journal automatically forwarded, as does http://www.livejournal.com/users/jonquils. (Try it!)

User: ironed_orchid Date: 08 Feb 2009 04:44 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

When tnh posted this "who are you in the real world" post, one of my friends made a locked post which can be summed up as "who are all these people who don't have to worry about jobs so they can just post their names while logged in as their usernames?". Which I think is a very valid point.

One thing about being a writer or big name blogger is that your name and your job are tied together, so that what you write on the internets can only result in more hits, and more people knowing your name and this is all for the good.

But for those of us who have other jobs, whether in private or public sector, we might want to to exercise some restraint in what we publish under our actual names.

I am very happy that google search for my real name only comes up with links to my academic and committee work. This is how it should be. A google search for my username will come up with links to my blogs and the other sites of which I am a member, and this is also of the good.

User: serrana Date: 08 Feb 2009 07:15 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I think you're thinking of someone other than me, dear heart; my google-fu is strong, but I don't use it in exchange for money at present (well, not in any direct way).


...and speaking of LJ cultural issues, I am recurrently surprised to realize that my LJ default is to assume a person is female until proven otherwise. I honestly can't think of another social sphere where this is true (I mention this because you've reminded me again that prusik is Not Female, which I had not realized until, er, last month. Strangely, nobody seems to think "you write like a girl" is a compliment.)


p.s. it would be hilarious if that were actually part of my job duties, being as the more-famous person with my (very common) name is, in fact, in the furry porn business. And she was v. early on the web. So for the last 15 years or so, anyone searching on my name has turned up...yep. Anthropomorphized foxes, doing the nasty.

Edited at 2009-02-08 07:19 am (UTC)

User: prusik Date: 08 Feb 2009 12:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Well, given that I'm a gay man, saying that I do anything "like a girl" can be perceived as Reinforcing Inappropriate Stereotypes. Having said that, I probably do write like a girl. Given that I would kill to write like Elizabeth Bear, I'm ok with that.

(I'm also a Chinese person who played the violin and worked at my parents' Chinese restaurant. I won Stereotype Bingo a while ago.)

User: prusik Date: 08 Feb 2009 12:57 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I know I shouldn't enter any discussion where I simply haven't had the time to read all the comments, but here we go:

I'm going to keep my personal opinion out of the next paragraph and stick strictly to the facts (except for the parentheticals):

tnh takes great offense at anyone on the net using pseudonyms in any context, not just LJ-ers. (Yes, this still falls under "taken offense at some of its customs." However, she's not singling out LJ for any special treatment. This is not a defense.) Also, she claims she's whitelisting, not blacklisting. In an unfortunately now friends-locked entry, she explicitly says that she's not making a grudge list. She's trying to prevent people from being tarred by words they didn't commit, not to punish people for words they did commit.

(Also, her account has been around since 2001. I don't know if she's been active for all that time.)

Now we get to my opinion:

I'm choosing to believe her. Creating a whitelist is consistent with everything I know about her. Creating a grudge list is not. She's not threatening to prevent anyone from being published in SF. I don't think even she can follow through on that threat. I think you pretty much have to piss off the entire community, and she realizes that she and her husband are not the entire community. I've never seen her threaten anything she can't follow through on.

This is totally orthogonal to LJ customs and whether or not she understands them. I just wanted to make sure the "grudge list" assertion doesn't go unchallenged. Because, yes, from certain vantage points, it looks like she's making a grudge list. However, she's really not. She's said so, and her doing so goes against everything I know about her. From my vantage point, the whitelist makes much more sense.

As for me and anonymity, I gave up on this handle being anonymous a while ago. It was freeing in a a way. Now, http://www..org, redirects to my LJ. I've always been careful about what I write so anonymity wasn't really buying me anything anyway.

Note though, that I still make people work at finding my name. I've just never assumed that I'm anonymous. Like you, I never mention my employer, for example.

I'm vaguely amused that serrana thinks I'm female. (Lots of men have tried and failed and I've apparently succeeded without intending, or wanting, to.) I wonder how many people think I'm white, or straight. (The answer, of course, is that I'm not on the radar of enough people for that to matter. That suits me fine.)

Just in case it needs saying, I'd hate it if you stopped speaking to me too.

User: spiralsheep Date: 08 Feb 2009 13:16 (UTC) Subject: What Teresa Nielson Hayden actually said, for the record, ... Keyword: chronographia FAIL

tnh: "Those of you I can't identify are not off the hook. I suggest that you never seek to take credit under your real name for anything you've done or written under your LJ pseudonym, because it's unlikely that I will ever forget you or what you've done."


Edited at 2009-02-08 01:17 pm (UTC)